Ah, New York City, how I love you so. You’ve been my home for decades and have given me everything I could ever want. A smelly, dysfunctional subway. Rent prices that would make Karl Marx turn in his grave, and how can we forget the incredibly vast college network of CUNY. Before I start, I’d like to say that there are multiple plus sides to being a student here. The cost of entry is remarkably low. The massive network allows for greater chances of social, academic, and career relationships and how can we forget, the coffee served in the Graduate Center being voted a record high of 6.5/10 by J.D. Power and Associates. Now that last sentence is a lie… the coffee was actually voted a 5.5/10 but I digress. I would love to give many thanks to CUNY because, without it, many of us wouldn’t be able to pursue higher education. It is a fact that I personally wouldn’t be able to afford college if CUNY didn’t exist, but this low cost of entry is not enough to cover the many faults the system has. For one, I wouldn’t say that our system is exactly state of the art. I can only speak about my experience over here at Queens College and the Graduate Center, and in that experience, everything from our websites, to the computers available at campus, are as old as that one shirt in your closet that you should really, really get rid off (you know the one). I believe we’ve all had moments in which our plans were foiled by error codes and blue screens. Just this past week, I had my Modern Philosophy class practically canceled because the classroom computer decided to randomly enter the astral plane. Our elevators are in a constant state of disarray. Some of the ramps on my campus have large cracks (I saw one being fixed a couple of days ago so +1 point for Gryffindor). A more equitable CUNY, I believe, is one that puts more funding into making sure that all of it’s students and faculty are taken care of. I know I do not have any experience running a college, I don’t have the know-how on what it takes to fix these issues, but I do know that my classmates and professors are struggling with broken and outdated equipment. I have been a part of many classes in which the professor has to completely change the lesson due to the computer/projector not working. I’ve had to see a line of my disabled classmates wait at the one elevator that works just to be late to class. A more enticing CUNY is a more equitable CUNY. If you just search up CUNY’s budget, the city councils website states that “CUNY’s Fiscal 2024 – 2028 Preliminary Financial Plan (Preliminary Plan) includes a budget of $1.27 billion in Fiscal 2025, which represents 1.15 percent of the City’s $109.4 billion Fiscal 2025 budget.” If I could ask the CUNY director anything, it would be this: how much would it cost to slowly upgrade the school’s tech? How much would it be to *actually* fix the elevators in our buildings? Whatever the cost, wouldn’t it be worth it if the changes allow the teachers to teach and the students to get to class? “The Preliminary Plan” is the plan of how CUNY is going to fund itself through the 2025 year and it “includes $700.9 million of revenue in Fiscal 2025 from five sources. Charges for
services, including tuition and fees, account for $415.0 million”. It’s us students who are literally paying for a majority of this. Is our money really going to broken equipment and a subpar experience? I believe that as long as we actively advocate for both our faculty and disabled community we can get the CUNY that we all can be a part of. I know it’s not that easy. There are a whole number of factors that I fail to comprehend. But you want to know what else isn’t easy, having to roll your way to the other side of a whole building, in the rain, just to get to an entrance that is accessible. Or having to quickly catch up on whatever material you missed just because you were 5 minutes late waiting for the elevator… again. These students have to already face more hardships than your average college student. I want us to change that, no matter the cost.

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